The Rifleman  

Reality is what it is - and what it is, is sometimes what you want it to be, and sometimes is not what you want it to be.

Reality is slippery as an eel, both in concept and definition.

It’s not what you think it is, and it’s not what you want it to be.

Guess you could say, reality is when you can’t change the channel. In other words, you’re stuck with the show you’re watching.

So if the Germans send armored vehicles crashing across your border (Poland, 1939; France, 1940; Yugoslavia and Greece, 1941; Russia, 1941), you can’t change the channel. You are stuck with the channel you are on.

Similarly, when Japanese dive bombers appear above Pearl Harbor in Dec ‘41, the only channel being changed was the mental one inside most American’s minds. And the new channel was quite a bit different from the old one. The peace movement in America had to go underground, “for the duration“ - and another generation.

No, it was not a peaceful world. Nor was America protected from the wolves on this planet by the wide Pacific and Atlantic oceans, like most believed - or wanted to believe.

Yep, there’s channel-changing going on, all the time - only it’s not out there, in reality. It’s in our heads, where the disconnect between what’s out there - and what’s really out there (as opposed to what we think is out there) occurs.

We still live on a planet where all the old rules apply. The aggressor aggresses; the victim defends. The predators prey, and the prey fights, flees, or gives up and gets eaten.

The goal being survival.

And the end result, survival of the fittest.

And the fittest, you can say, are the ones who master reality. Or come closest to mastering reality - to understand what the rules are, and determined to win by playing by them.

Pretty simple stuff.

Yet humans have a way of interposing their minds into that equation.

And changing it, they think.

But reality is billions of years old, and human minds think in terms of today, and tomorrow - and maybe next month.

So, in the end, reality wins out.

Thus we introduce our story of Mr and Mrs Wabbit, in a lush garden, eating their fill, and creating more little Wabbits to hop around and enjoy the overpowering richness of their environment.

The Wabbits don’t know who made the garden, and don’t really care. Filling their bellies, enjoying life - that’s enough for them.

Whoever built the garden for them has long passed from the scene. So who cares?

But meantime, the fox has discovered the Wabbits in their garden, and the fox is lean and hungry - or, in more contemporary terms, the tiger…

The Wabbits, of course, don’t know, and don’t care. Their little refuge of safety is and always has been - and therefore, in their complacent, placid minds - always will be.

Guess you could say, the Wabbits have a disconnect with reality, right?

How does it happen?

How does it turn out?

How does the end come?

The future is not written, so we don’t know.

But we do know the future will come, and it will be written, and Mr. and Mrs. Wabbit are not going to like reading what will be written.

Maybe the predators accumulate, and put pressure on the fence (a gift of the forgotten ones who built the garden, who also set up defenses to protect the inhabitants), and the fence suddenly gives way - and the predators have a field day, and all the Wabbits are eaten (in the real world, dispossessed, and enslaved).

For the predators, it’s a day of celebration, of feasting.

For the Wabbits, it’s an unmitigated, end-of-the-world disaster.

For reality, it’s just another day…

What would have happened if one of the Wabbits was alert, and spotted the danger, and sounded the alarm?

Probably no one would have paid the ‘crazy Wabbit” any attention - there’s too much to eat, too much to enjoy, too much personal entertainment to spare any attention for anything remote or outside the bounds of the Wabbit’s personal world.

What would have happened if the Wabbits were to remember their past?

It’s possible they would have discovered they benefited because someone in the past cared enough to seize ground, plant the garden, chase off the predators, and erect the fence.

It’s possible the Wabbits will wake up to the notion that the garden was not always there - nor is there any guarantee it will continue to be there…

It’s possible, as a result, the Wabbits come to understand and feel a debt of obligation to make sure the garden continues, the fence is kept in good repair, that it’s important to pass the garden along intact to all the little future Wabbits.

And in the process of remembering, maybe honor the unknown (to the Wabbits) founders of the garden.

When you get to honoring, when you understand the debt, you are likely to also feel something else new to you: determination.

Determination (sometimes, grim) to make sure what those founders did is not forgotten, and is not allowed to die.

“To remember, is to honor.”

Now, there is one more scenario to consider, one more alternative future: What if, instead of breaking down the fence, with the ensuing rush of predators into the midst of the Wabbit family, the predators are more clever? What if they sneak in, disguised as Wabbits?

Suppose they believe in the Golden Goose, and simply want to put the Wabbits to work for them, producing more Wabbits - and they arrange in some fashion to harvest a Wabbit or two or however many, whenever there’s hunger to satisfy?

What if, as a result, the predators multiply (natural, with all that food around) and the harvesting demand increases and increases, until the Golden Goose is killed, and eaten?

Gosh, by a roundabout way, we’ve come back to the same end: all the Wabbits gone, and the predators temporarily satiated.

In the endless cycle of predator-prey relationships, over-harvesting the prey results in a scarcity of prey, and the predator population collapses.

Reality. You can’t keep it out, even when you’re a predator.

Yet, we don’t view life in that global sense. As Wabbits, we are concerned solely with the fortunes of the Wabbits, and having the predator population collapse simply because all or most of us are killed and eaten is of little consolation. Right?

Far better to avoid this future in the first place, wouldn’t you agree?

And how do we do it?

By waking up our fellow Wabbits to the sacrifice of the founders, and the reality that the garden we are in is not ours to squander, but something to be improved upon, expanded, increased - and passed on, to the next generation of Wabbits - and to make sure that what is passed on is not simply the garden - no sir! - but the heritage of the garden, the knowledge of the true cost of that beautiful garden, and the need for the next generation to protect it, to preserve it, to increase it…

Thus, the parable of the Wabbits.

The end of the parable is not yet written, even if in gross outline you can guess the end, should things not be changed. Should the Wabbits not be woken to reality. Should the Wabbits continue to slumber on.

It’s up to us, is the essence of the parable.

Some of us Wabbits are awake, and it’s incumbent - an obligation so ancient as to extend right back to April 19th, 1775 - upon us to do it - to step up and save the garden - by waking up our fellow sleeping Wabbits.

Which is how and why this is an Appleseed parable.

Not a complete one, because we are still writing the future.

Because we can still write the future.

We have power to influence that future.

And if we have the power, we must use it.

Because the garden is in danger. The predators are gathering. The future of the Wabbits is doubtful…

So we must do what we can to change the channel.

Otherwise, there will come an end to “The Wabbit Supremacy”.

Mankind’s best hope, a shinning beacon to a dark world, the “city on the hill” - it will all disappear.

Because you knew, and did nothing.

Project Appleseed.

Why not help us save the garden?